SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt, June 7, (Agencies): An Egyptian security official declared the blockade of Gaza a failure Monday and said his country will keep its border with the Palestinian territory open indefinitely.
Keeping that crossing point open long term would ease the blockade imposed by Israel three years ago to isolate and punish Gaza’s Hamas rulers. It also restores a link to the outside the world for some of Gaza’s 1.5 million Palestinians.
Egypt opened its border with Gaza soon after Israel’s deadly raid on an international flotilla of activists trying to break the blockade a week ago. Israel has not publicly protested the Egyptian move, but officials declined to comment Monday.
In another escalation of the tension off Gaza’s shores, Israeli naval forces shot and killed four men wearing wet suits off the coast on Monday, and the militant group Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades said they were members of its marine unit training for a mission.
Vice President Joe Biden said Monday the US is closely consulting with Egypt and other allies to find new ways to “address the humanitarian, economic, security, and political aspects of the situation in Gaza.” He issued the statement after meeting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.
Egypt and Israel have maintained the blockade since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2007, with Israel describing it as an essential measure to stop weapons from reaching Hamas militants, who have hit southern Israel with rockets and in past years killed hundreds in suicide bombings.
The Egyptian security official said, however, that the closure has failed to achieve its goals, including the release of an Israeli soldier held by Hamas since 2006. Israeli airstrikes and Egyptian security efforts have also yet to choke off a bustling smuggling trade that uses hundreds of tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border, though the official said Egypt is determined to shut them down.
The crossing point at the border town of Rafah is still subject to restrictions, with Egypt letting in some humanitarian aid and allowing Palestinians into Egypt on a case-by-case basis for medical treatment or to travel onward to attend foreign universities, for example.
Egypt will not allow in large cargo shipments or construction material because the
terminal is designed primarily as a crossing for travelers, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
Clash
In Monday’s clash, the Israeli military said a naval force spotted the Palestinians in the waters off Gaza and opened fire. It claimed the forces had prevented an attack on Israeli targets.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades said the four killed were training in Gaza’s waters. The violent offshoot of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah faction, made the claim in a text message sent to reporters in Gaza.
Four bodies were retrieved and taken to a hospital in central Gaza, said Moawiya Hassanain, a Palestinian health official. The Palestinian naval police said two people were still missing.
Unity
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan Monday urged for reconciliation between feuding Palestinian factions and said Ankara was ready to help.
Healing the rift between the Fatah faction of Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas and the Islamist Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, “is a must,” Erdogan said, adding that Hamas welcomed a mediation role for Ankara.
He made the remarks in comments on the situation in the Middle East in the wake of an Israeli raid last week on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, which claimed the lives of nine Turks and plunged Turkish-Israeli ties into deep crisis.
“Divisions should not persist in the current circumstances... I believe we can secure peace” between Hamas and Fatah, he said at a joint news conference with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, in Istanbul for a regional security meeting.
“Hamas officials are giving us the required mandate on this issue and they are telling us that they want the problem to be resolved.
“We have to see the same approach from Fatah and I’m going to have a meeting (with them) in a while,” he said, referring to scheduled talks with Abbas, who was also in Istanbul.
Erdogan reiterated that Hamas — viewed by Israel and the West as a terrorist group — should not be excluded from peace efforts.
Arab League chief Amr Mussa will make a groundbreaking “solidarity” visit to the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip next week, top aide Hisham Yussef told AFP on Monday.
The head of the 22-member pan-Arab organisation “will visit the Gaza Strip next week — the first trip of its kind by an Arab League secretary general,” Yussef said.
The trip is aimed at “showing solidarity with the Palestinian people in the face of the blockade and (express) the need to step up inter-Palestinian reconciliation,” he added.
Yussef did not specify when the visit would take place but Arab League sources said it could happen on June 14 or 15.
Reconciliation
Palestinian leader Mahmud Abbas said Monday that he would send a delegation to the Gaza Strip to seek reconciliation with the Islamist Hamas movement after Israel’s deadly aid flotilla raid.
“The best answer to (the raid)... is for Palestinian groups to reconcile and resist Israel hand-in-hand,” Abbas told Turkey’s NTV news channel in Istanbul where he was to attend a meeting of an Asian security grouping.
“We have put together a delegation from the Palestinian leadership to go to Gaza and persuade Hamas to reconcile,” he said with a voice-over translation into Turkish.
The only condition for reconciliation is for Hamas to accept the plan drawn up by Egypt last year which called on the two groups to make peace and hold elections, he said.
“I believe and hope that this time we will succeed,” the Palestinian leader added.
Abbas’s Fatah movement and Hamas have remained deeply divided since the Islamists seized control of Gaza in 2007, in a rift that has widened since Israel’s devastating war on the enclave in late 2008 and early 2009.
Ship
The Iranian Red Crescent said on Monday that it will send three aid ships to Gaza in the latest bid to break the blockade imposed on the Palestinian territory by Iran’s archfoe Israel.
It will also send a plane carrying 30 tonnes of medical equipment to Egypt for onward delivery to Gaza.
Red Crescent director for international affairs Abdolrauf Adibzadeh told Iranian media that two ships would leave for Gaza this week, followed at a later date by a third vessel.
The first two ships will head to Gaza in coordination with the Turkish government.
Of the two ships, “one will carry 70 aid workers such as nurses and medics and the other will have foodstuffs and medicines,” Adibzadeh was quoted as saying on the state television website.
“The (two) ships will be sent to Gaza by end of this week,” Adibzadeh told the state IRNA news agency.
The news agency said the third vessel would be equipped with an onboard operating theatre and would head for the Palestinian territory at a later date.
Adibzadeh said the Red Crescent has called for Iranian volunteers to act as relief workers and accompany the first two vessels.
“Volunteers who want to go to Gaza and help the oppressed people of occupied Palestine can refer to the Red Crescent website and register,” he said.
He said an aid plane would “leave in a short time for Egypt in coordination with the Egyptian Red Crescent.”
The Iranian Red Crescent had previously sent an aid ship carrying food and medicines to Gaza in December 2008 but it was prevented from reaching the territory by the Israeli navy.
Probe
Washington has asked Israel to investigate an incident where a US student lost an eye after she was hit by an Israeli tear-gas canister during a West Bank protest, the US embassy said on Monday.
Emily Henochowicz, 21, was apparently hit in the face by a tear-gas canister fired by border police during a protest near the West Bank city of Ramallah over Israel’s use of force against a Gaza-bound aid ship.
The US embassy in Tel Aviv passed on a request to the Israeli foreign ministry asking that Israel investigate the incident, embassy spokesman Kurt Hoyer told AFP.
The foreign ministers of France and Britain said an “international” inquiry was necessary to resolve the dispute over Israel’s deadly raid on Gaza aid ships, after talks late Sunday in the French capital.
“We think it is very important that there is a credible and transparent investigation... there should be an international presence at minimum” in the probe, said British Foreign Secretary William Hague at a press conference with his French counterpart Bernard Kouchner.
Kouchner added that the international inquiry was needed “because several countries are involved” in the incident.
France also proposed that the European Union could step in to help defuse the situation by checking the cargo on ships bound for the Gaza Strip as well as the Rafah crossing point into the Hamas-run Palestinian territory.
“We could very well check the cargo of ships heading to Gaza... We would be very willing to do it,” said Kouchner of an EU role.
Aid
Italy and Britain on Monday called for aid to begin flowing to Gaza again, as regional tensions mounted over Israel’s deadly raid on an aid convoy last week.
“The situation in the Gaza Strip is becoming untenable,” Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told a joint new conference with his British counterpart William Hague.
“We have said that the blockade of Gaza is unsustainable and unacceptable. It’s very important that we arrive at a new arrangement whereby aid can flow to Gaza,” Hague said.
Frattini and Hague also called again for international observers to take part in an Israeli probe into last Monday’s raid, in which nine activists were killed.
“There should be an investigation, an inquiry into the events of a week ago with an international presence,” Hague said.
Policy
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt on Monday harshly criticised Israel for the deadly Gaza aid flotilla attack last week, urging the country to quickly halt its “foolish” blockade policy against the Gaza Strip.
The Gaza blockade “is a foolish policy. It breeds extremism and creates extremists,” Bildt said during a debate in the Swedish parliament on how to address the ongoing crisis in the Middle East.
“The unacceptable and counterproductive Israeli policy towards Gaza ... isolates Israel and it humiliates and degrades innocent people,” he said.
Nonetheless, he rejected a call from the opposition for Sweden to launch sanctions against Israel and bring home the Swedish military attache in the country.
Gangsters
Malaysia’s prime minister on Monday condemned Israel as “world gangsters” and said it should face the International Criminal Court over the deadly Gaza aid flotilla attack.
“Malaysia will urge the United Nations Security Council to tackle Israel’s aggressive acts and to have those who committed such heinous crimes to be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC),” premier Najib Razak told parliament.
In a motion condemning last week’s raid on a Turkish vessel which left nine dead, he also called on the United States to make Israel behave responsibly.
“The Israeli commandos shot the activists point blank and even from the back, and this is an act of a coward which cannot be forgiven,” he said.
“These blatant acts occurred because the world gangsters, Israel, feel they are protected by a world power.”
Najib also urged Israel to pay compensation for confiscated humanitarian aid and for the “physchological, emotional and physical trauma brought upon the activists”.
Malaysian lawmakers later unanimously backed Najib to condemn Israel’s raid.
Rania
Queen Rania of Jordan criticised Israel Monday over its deadly raid on an aid flotilla last week and warned that its hardline policies towards the Palestinians were squeezing out moderates in the region.
Writing in The Independent newspaper, she said Israel’s blockade of Gaza had “reduced it to a barely functioning, open-air prison”, adding: “Every day the blockade continues is another day our humanity remains under siege.”
Israel’s attack on a convoy trying to break the blockade, which left nine activists dead, was conducted with “blatant and absurd disregard for anything resembling international law, human rights and diplomatic norms”, she said.
“Although I was stunned at the glaring outrageousness of the attack, I am not surprised by it,” the queen wrote, arguing it was the result of a defensive doctrine whose “primary goal is to survive — and that precludes everything.”
The wife of King Abdullah II continued: “Assigning themselves authority and immunity, Israel’s leaders feel licensed to do whatever they like and not expect an international outcry.”
An Israeli parliamentary committee on Monday recommended stripping an Arab Israeli lawmaker of some key privileges after she joined a flotilla of foreign aid ships trying to break the blockade on Gaza.
Haneen Zuabi, an MP with Balad, a left-wing Arab nationalist party, sparked outrage in Israel for her participation in the protest flotilla, which was the centre of a botched navy raid that left nine activists dead.
Seven out of eight MPs on the Knesset House Committee voted in favour of stripping Zuabi of her diplomatic passport and parliamentary funding for legal defence.
They also voted in favour of taking away her parliamentary privilege to leave the country even if she is wanted in connection with a felony.
“The time has come to show a yellow card to Arab lawmakers, especially to Haneen Zuabi who is an accomplice in the attempt to kill soldiers,” said committee member Michael Ben-Ari of the hawkish National Union party.
The measures will not take effect until they are approved by the Knesset plenum.
Protest
A pro-Palestinian group which helped organise the Gaza aid flotilla intercepted by the Israeli navy in a raid which cost nine lives last week on Monday announced the closure of its headquarters in Cyprus.
In protest at the lack of cooperation with the mission from the Cyprus government, the Free Gaza Movement’s office is to close down on Tuesday and relocate at a later date to London.
The Cyprus government banned ships and passengers from leaving the island to join the sea convoy which was anchored off the island before heading for Gaza when it came under Israeli attack in international waters on May 31.
“We leave tomorrow (Tuesday) and the office will be closed because we feel we are not welcome anymore on Cyprus and the government has made that clear,” the movement’s Audrey Bomse told AFP.
She said her group had not been informed in advance of a “secretive” executive order banning the use of Cyprus as a staging post for the attempt to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza.
“If we knew about it, we would never have brought European MPs to Cyprus to join the flotilla,” she said.
Bomse said Cyprus had cooperated with several past missions to break the blockade by sea, allowing the Free Gaza Movement (FGM) to ferry passengers headed for Gaza into international waters.